Spitting Prohibited

2 kids and a big bill

Jon started OT today.  So far, so good.  It's a bit like having your very own fun gymnasium and a very fun gym teacher there to work with you.  He thinks this is an awesome new thing he gets to do.

I'm happy he's happy.  I guess I was just hoping that she would work with him a bit and say "I know exactly what to do for this kid!!!  Let's get to work!"  Instead it was more like, "Well I can see that he would benefit from some OT, but he probably won't need it for too long."  Which I guess is good.

But it doesn't sound like he's going to get "solved" with this therapy.  More like this will help him catch up with where he should be developmentally, but not really address why he fell behind in the first place.

I get this "solving" expectation from my mom.  When Brooke was a baby (and colicky) she was always coming up with one solution, which would work once and she would announce, "I've found the solution to Brooke!"  And it would drive me a little crazy, because I was a new mother and hyper sensitive and viewed any statement that wasn't "You are doing a wonderful job!" as criticism.

Now I'm an old mom (according to Grant.  Thanks kid...yer outta the will!) and I'd love the solution!

                                                                               Pick a kid, any kid!  I'll take the solution!!

<next unconnected random thought>

Brooke goes to Girl's camp next week!  What in the world are we going to do with out her for 5 days??? 

Who will the boys fight over sitting by in the car or at the dinner table? It is going to be one strange week.

<another completely unrelated thought>

So it's summer time, while others of you are planning vacations and camp outs, Tom and I are planning which bill we're paying off this time.  I have no idea why these things come up in the summer.  You would think we would pick, I don't know...January or something.  The weathers not good, Christmas is over, let's start that bill paying frenzy.  No, this always comes up in the summer for some reason.

Anyway, wish us luck as we attempt to pay off Beneficial.  $4000 in 2 months...ouch!  But it will really help the when it's gone.  So we are scrimping along trying to save up for the 2 big payments.  I gotta say, I love that my husband has worked so hard to get us in a situation where we can even contemplate paying off that much in 2 months. 

After this though we will have paid off everything except 1 credit card and the biggieness of Student loans.  I cannot wait until we can just start throwing everything we've got against Aunt Sallie...I'd like to kick her out of the family, as appreciative as I am for her assistance in helping Tom through college.

Scare-wy

As most of you know my mother passed away in August, 2005 of ALS.  Some of you may know that my Grandmother passed away in August, 2004 of the same disease.  My grandmother did not have the extensive treatment my mother received so there is some internal family debate there, but as her disease progressed in such a similar way to my mother's, and in deed was the catalyst of getting my mom to finally seek treatment.

My mom tested negative for the then only known genetic link for ALS (the genetic cases of ALS are very minimal anyway), my Grandmother did not receive the test.  Regardless, we all breathed a sigh of relief when we got the news of mom's negative results.  However, today there is news of another genetic link.  Again, this link has been shown in minimal cases, so there is no reason to assume that my mother would have tested positive for this link either.

Besides the obvious that both she and her mother died of the same disease.  The same extremely rare disease.

Tom called me to tell me of the new research development, he'd seen it on the web.  He's always excited to see any developments in ALS research.  Usually I am too.  But this one is scary.

I did a little research myself, and found that there is an ALS research center here.  And I called them and volunteered to participate in a research study.  The doctor overseeing the research (I've forgotten his name) will be calling me in the next few days to discuss the procedure, and schedule the testing.

Assuming I don't chicken out.  (I'm not going to.  But a little part of me really wants to.)

I know it's a good thing to do.  I'm trying to focus on the vastly more likely result, that the tests will show nothing unusual and my results will just be added to the control group.  To do it's small part in helping doctors to be able to understand this disease.  Or that I would love to see this disease eradicated and if this small part is my only part in that, at least I will have done what I could do. Or that when I get the results that nothing is unusual I will have one more reason to breathe easy, more reason for confidence.

But there is a small part of me terrified that they will find something.